Work Text:
Fighting strangers was easy.
Didn’t matter if it was some Kook with too much hair gel or a dude twice his size at a gas station, fighting out in the world made sense. You got hit, you hit back. There were rules, even if they were unspoken. Maybe you won. Maybe you got your ass kicked. Either way, it was done.
It was fast, and It was fair – in its own stupid way.
Fighting Luke wasn’t really fighting. It didn’t start with fists. It started with a silence. A door slammed too hard, a beer bottle catching the counter at a bad angle. Luke’s eyes narrowing – just halfway through.
It hadn't always been like that.
After his Momma died, JJ had to stay with Ricky's family for a while. Dad was spiraling – too high, too drunk. Too far gone to even pick up the phone. JJ remembered the call: He’s doing better now, kid, wants you back. So he came home. Seven years old, clutching a backpack with broken zippers and a stuffed shark he didn’t tell his dad he still slept with.
And it was okay at first. Quiet. They’d cried a few times – holding onto each other like the house might fall in. Luke’s hands had trembled on JJ’s back. JJ had buried his face in his dad’s shirt and stayed there. For a little while, it felt like neither of them wanted to let go. But it didn’t last. Dad started sleeping more, drinking again. He’d still pat JJ on the back sometimes, ruffle his hair, hand him a plate, things like that. But some days he didn’t say much at all. Other days he snapped, Shut the hell up, J or Go outside if you’re gonna keep making noise. Maybe a shove, or an arm grabbed too tight. Squeezes that left marks for a day or two. But nothing that counted.
It wasn’t anything new. He’d always known his dad was the boss of him. When he was five, he broke a big glass bowl – one he'd just told him not to touch – so he yanked JJ up and spanked him right there in the kitchen. His momma must have heard the wailing as she walked in the thick of it. She took one look at them, then crossed the room and slapped Luke across the face.
JJ still remembered the sound.
“The hell was that?” Dad had said, still gripping his arm. “You serious right now?”
“Touch him again and I swear to God—”
He’d laughed and called it discipline. She’d hit him again, harder. It had blown up after. Yelling, slammed doors – nothing new. JJ was used to it, so were the neighbors. But after that fight, Luke hadn’t spanked him again, not while she was still around. And JJ didn’t break anything for a long time.
Then the time with the toolbox when he was eight. JJ knocked it over, sent sockets clattering across the floor. Luke yelled so loud it made his ears ring. Threw a wrench – not at him, but at the wall behind him. That was the first time he hid in the closet in his room.He didn’t even know why, really. He just did.
It was a year later when his dad actually hit him for the first time. Not a shove or a grab. A real hit. They were late and he was tearing apart the house looking for his damn keys. JJ had just tried to help. Thought maybe he saw them by the sink earlier. So he said something. That was it. “I think I saw them—”
The back of Luke’s hand hit before he could finish. JJ was confused by the taste in his mouth at first. Back then, it wasn’t familiar.
What stuck with him most wasn't the pain. It was the look on his dads face right after, like he hadn’t even meant to do it. He just grabbed his keys off the sink and said, “Let’s go”, as if nothing happened. The drive was quiet. JJ stared out the window, wiping his face with his sleeve every time the tears came. Tried very hard to stop, but couldn’t. Later, Luke tossed him a Butterfinger from the gas station without looking over. “Here. Don’t say I never get you nothin’.”
JJ kept the bar in his nightstand drawer until it melted in the summer heat. It probably would’ve still been there if his dad hadn’t found it and thrown it away with a muttered, “Candy’s no good melted, dumbass. Gonna bring roaches.”
That was how it worked. Hit, pretend it didn't happen…Then hit again. And it only got worse from there. Luke didn’t always feel bad about it. Hell, half the time he thought it was helpful. Like JJ was some busted engine and getting his ass beat was just part of maintenance.
“You think I like doing this?” he’d say, belt still in hand, voice tight with disappointment. “You think I wanna raise a little punk who never listens?”
That line stayed with him. Made sense in the worst way. Dad wasn’t wrong – JJ messed up, broke shit, got in trouble. His grades sucked. Maybe that’s just what you got when you were the kind of kid who couldn’t get anything right.
And when it didn’t make sense... when it was too much, JJ blamed the drugs. Coke made Dad mean. Pills made him weird. Booze? That was Russian roulette. Yeah, JJ could read it easy. Didn't mean he could ever stop it though.
And when it was over, sometimes you still had to be in the same room with him and pretend nothing happened. Sometimes dad would smile. Crack a beer. Pass JJ a sandwich like he hadn’t left a handprint on his arm just minutes before. Like they were just playing house. And God help you if you cried. Luke hated that shit, like it hurt him to see it. You’d get laughed at on a good day, hit again or kicked out on a bad one. Even when JJ could barely sit from the way the belt had landed. Even when his back ached from hitting the wall, or his ears were ringing bad and he wasn’t sure if it was from yelling or impact or both. He’d bite down hard, eyes stinging, while it caught in his throat, trying to crawl out.
But after… it stuck. Sat wrong under his skin, itching from the inside. Jaw tight, legs jittery, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stop moving. He’d swipe dumb shit off a counter just to feel the rush. Other times he’d grab his board and go straight for the nastiest break he could find, the kind that chewed you up and spit you out cold and gasping, more alive than ever. Some days he’d push into someone’s space, mouth runnin', begging for it. Go on. Swing. Just so he could swing back.
It lived there, just under the surface. Pushed and burned until he let it out. And when it did... then he could breathe. Only then did the world feel right again. For a little while.
There was no flinching in real fights anymore. Not when a cop shoved him against a wall or when some Kook’s fist came swinging. It was whatever, muscle memory now. You swung, ducked, maybe landed one back. Sometimes you laughed through the blood. Took what you had to take. At least in a fight like that, you had options. You weren’t cornered in a hallway with someone twice your size telling you it was your fault. You didn’t have to guess what would set him off, then try to act normal so your friends wouldn’t start asking things.
So when Brock started running his mouth in front of everyone about Big John, that same itch lit up under JJ’s skin. He saw red before he saw reason. Some punches, one cracked jaw, and a referral to the office later, he was sitting in front with John B saying, “You can’t keep doing this, man.”
JJ tried to laugh it off, like usual. Pope didn’t bite.
“You should’ve stayed down, JJ,” he’d said. “You made it worse.”
He’d wanted to yell at them then, ask if they even knew what it was like to be torn down in front of everyone. Someone making it obvious you didn’t matter – and nobody giving a shit enough to step in. He knew that feeling too well. And he’d die before he let John B feel it. Or Pope. Or Kie. He wasn’t ever gonna let them feel that kind of small.
Fighting was the only way he had to make it stop. The only thing he ever saw that worked. He didn’t have the words, but knew it in his bones – if he didn't fight back, it would… tear him apart or whatever. So instead, he just muttered, ‘It worked, didn't it?’
Strangers bled and walked away. Luke stayed. That’s what made him flinch now. Not fists or pain, but that quiet tension. Boots on the floor giving a certain mood away. A pause mid-sentence when he’d start again, slower, or when he’d lean on the doorframe just a little too long. He read the signals like traffic lights by now. Yellow was shut up. Red was shut up and get the fuck out. Green was safe... probably. Depends on the day.
People thought violence was loud – yelling, stuff breaking. And it was, mostly. But the worst kind didn’t need any of that. It was mornings with nobody talking. Breathing quieter than usual, trying not to set anything off, ’cause you didn’t know if today was one of those days. That snap in your spine you couldn’t stop when someone moved too fast, even if it was a friend.
He was good at hiding it. That twitch. His whole body reacting to moods or tiny motions like normal people reacted to... explosions, maybe. Loud, real shit. Sometimes it felt like he knew what someone was gonna do before they even knew themselves. And he hated that he was usually right.
Reading a room took less than three seconds – tone, posture, the weight behind a sigh. He could tell if a hit was coming based on how someone sat down. That kind of knowledge didn’t go away, just got quiet, tucked behind the jokes and the smirks and the bullshit confidence. It lived in his spine. His shoulders. His fists.
JJ didn't want to hurt anyone, but sometimes did it anyway. Because it meant he didn’t have to be scared. That he was in control.
And if that made him like Luke?
He didn’t want to think about that.